Le 2012-12-07 01:04, Sue Gardner a écrit :
Hello folks,
On-passing this FYI --- I hope the formatting doesn't break too much. If people want to discuss this, maybe the first person could put it on a wiki page (attached to Narrowing Focus, maybe?) so the discussion is recorded for other interested parties and can be revisited later, rather than just being ephemeral.
Thanks, Sue
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: "Sue Gardner" sgardner@wikimedia.org Date: Dec 5, 2012 7:05 PM Subject: Announcement: Wikimedia Foundation restructure (Global Dev & Engineering) To: "Staff All" wmfall@lists.wikimedia.org
hey folks,
The purpose of this note is to lay out some changes to the structure of the Wikimedia Foundation. Some will take place immediately, and others will play out over the next six months. I’m announcing it in a single big note rather than bits & pieces because I want everyone to have the overview: where we’re headed and why. This will be long --- please bear with me.
First, some context. Why are we restructuring? Basically: if an organization’s going to function well, it needs to reorg every now and then. As an organization grows and changes and learns, its organizational structure gradually gets out-of-date --- it needs to be refreshed based on our experiences and our ambitions, or else it’ll eventually stop working. And structure should follow strategy: as strategy evolves, structure needs to evolve as well. With the Narrowing Focus emphasis on engineering and grantmaking, we’ve revised our strategy, and so we need to refresh our structure too.
Well, one may argue the exact inverse point of view : if it works, don't break it. Could you, please, provide us some pointers to documents describing the "Wikimedia strategy changes" ?
The whole purpose of this restructure is to support increased emphasis on engineering and grantmaking. Some specific issues:
- The FDC is off to a good start: it’s proved it’s able to make tough
choices, and its decisions are being respected by the chapters and the community. For the FDC to do a really good job for us next year though, it's going to need to be able to assess the impact of the funding it’s given out --- not just “is this organization capable of spending this much money competently” but “to what extent is this spending helping the movement achieve its goals.” The FDC won't be able do that without support from us, and so we need and want to invest in support for programmatic evaluation. At this point the movement has very little ability to say “x kind of activity is having a good effect” and “Y kind of activity is not” -- we need to help equip it to do that.
What's the FDC ? Sorry if my questions seems naives, but I'm not a native english speaker nor a long term contributor on this mailing list. Please fell free to provide me links to document you think I should read to better understand subjects discussed on this list.
- Currently more than half the organization’s staffing and spending
is concentrated in engineering. That’s great and it fits with our strategy, but it doesn’t necessarily make sense to have half the organization reflected at the C-level by a single person. I would like the C-team to be less admin-heavy and more weighted towards programmatic activities.
Does C-team working on C language software, or is that some internal classification ? What do you call programmatic activities ?
First, we’re going to revamp Global Development. Starting now, that department will be called Grantmaking and Programs. It will be co-led by Anasuya (grantmaking) and Frank (programs). Anasuya and Frank will have separate direct reports and budgets, but we’re going to keep it as a single department because neither sub-department is very large and because the two are deeply interlinked: we wouldn’t have one without the other. Anasuya, currently Director of Global Learning and Grantmaking, will become Senior Director of Grantmaking, and Frank, currently Global Education Program Director, will become Senior Director of Programs.
This point sounds like wind, smoke and mirrors to me. Those said I have no problem with people playing with syntactic games, enjoy! ;P
- Siko is taking over responsibility from Asaf for all funding for
individuals. This will make it possible for us to grow our individual grant-making, and it will also free up Asaf to do more small organization development. Siko will also be responsible for documentation and analysis of all grants except the ones funded by the FDC. It’s important for us to grow grantmaking to individuals because individuals create 99% of the value in the projects. They do it with practically no funding, but in some cases a little money will be able to make something great happen.
On the other hand, don't you fear a reaction from contributors who could feel wronged when they see some people got money where they get nothing? I personally doesn't have opinion on this topic, I just wonder if some thoughts were already thrown on this topic.